My Blog

Keeping The Place Warm While Lee Sips Boat Drinks

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As a child, I was often admonished by a certain older brother that I was not to:

1. Go in his room when he wasn’t home.

2. Touch his stuff (which meant, basically, the stacks of TV Guides, over played Knack albums and his novel-in-progress…which was about an underwater sperm lab if memory serves me correct).

3.  Mess up the Stratego board (Lee played A LOT of Stratego back in the day).

Cut to 25 years later, and here I am touching everything. It feels excellent. So, until Lee gets back, I rule this blog! I will play "My Sharona" all night! I will knock over his stacks of TV Guides and I will re-write his novel!

In the meantime, should you wish to contact me, send all hate mail, queries, odd questions , naked pictures of Cylons and/or naked pictures of me to TodGoldberg@TodGoldberg.com

Lewis Perdue v. Dan Brown

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Lewis Perdue, my former journalism prof at UCLA, caused quite a stir a while back in the national press when he charged that large chunks of THE DAVINCI CODE were lifted from his novels.  Now he’s filed his lawsuit, which you can read for yourself here. The detailed, side-by-side comparisons between THE DAVINCI CODE and Lew’s DAVINCI LEGACY  and DAUGHTER OF GOD are especially interesting…

Why Tod Goldberg Writes

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Tod Goldberg

I once had a real job. Actually, I once had two real
jobs. My first real job went something like this:

7:30am. Arrive at office. Drink coffee. Add non-dairy
creamer. Turn on phones. Listen to voice mail messages
from temps calling out sick from the only job they
will ever get from me. Listen to voice mail messages
from people who are newly temps and want that one job
they will invariably fuck up beyond comprehension,
causing them to forever wander the earth unemployed
and embittered ˆ first at themselves, later at me,
later still at the whole damn patriarchal society. Add
sugar. Contemplate Krispy Kreme.

7pm. Leave office. Loosen tie. Bang head against
steering wheel. Sit in traffic. Contemplate ritual
suicide. Contemplate going back to school and making
something of myself. Contemplate what, exactly, that
degree in English has gotten me besides a crappy job
getting people temp jobs. Go home. Eat Rice-A-Roni.
Beg girlfriend to kill me.

Total time at job: Two years.

My second real job was a little better. It went like
this:

9:00am or 9:30am or 10am (depending on whether or not
I thought we’d be filing Chapter 11 that specific day
or if my boss was going to be hung-over or if my main
client was likely to call me). Arrive at office of
a "direct response advertising agency ˆ which is code for
Joint Where Infomercials Are Made, which is code for
Company That Subsequently Was Discovered To Be In
Cahoots With Its Main Client Over Some Exercise
Machines That Didn’t Work and Possibly Could Kill
Small Children, Pets, and Haitian Immigrants and,
Additionally, Was Funneling Money To Some Cult In
Texas. Listen to voice mail messages from my main client. I’m now an
Account Executive with a very fine cubicle and at least one client who
is quite angry that his infomercial "The Magic Scrub That Will Make
Your Face Break Out in Welts The Size of Cocker Spaniels Whilst Making
You Look Twenty Years Younger" is not performing as well as he’d like
in a few specific markets. Specifically,
he says, "Spo-KANE is ‘sucking ass’" and "who the fuck
wanted it in Spo-KANE in the first fucking place?" Go
to men’s room with LA Times sports section in tow.
Wait until my cubicle partner Dan finishes his twenty
five minute bowel exercise before I can check the
scores. Eat a bagel. Yell at some underling because an
infomercial I hate and am somewhat responsible for is
performing poorly in Spokane. I pronounce Spokane that
way it’s actually pronounced, unlike my client,
because I’m detail oriented, think outside the box,
and am ready to throw myself on the mercy of the cult
in Texas. Do some office-y stuff, like prepare for
Secret Santa week, think about how to tell my boss
that when he says "perfect-o" I want to reach my hand
down his throat until I can feel his spleen. Make some
calls to Ronco. Ask about getting one of those
rotisserie cookers for my mother-in-law. Eat a bagel
(they’re free and provided by the company that is
about to be shuttered).

6:00pm. Leave office. Loosen my baseball hat (casual
office – you know how ad agencies are). Bang head
against steering wheel. Sit in traffic. Contemplate
ritual suicide. Contemplate going back to school and
making something of myself. Contemplate what, exactly,
that degree in English has gotten me besides a crappy
job working for an advertising agency that peddles
Infomercials. Go home. Eat Rice-A-Roni. Beg wife to
kill me.

Total time at job: one year.

That why I write. That’s why I’m a writer.

Tod Goldberg is the author
of two novels, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books), which sold to Hollywood for big bucks, and Living Dead Girl
(Soho Press), which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His book of  collected of short stories will be out in Fall 2005.

Tod’s post originally appeared on Bob Sassone’s Professor Barnhardt’s Journal. Thanks to Sarah Weinman for reminding me of it. – Lee

Holiday Hiatus

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I’m heading off with my family  to Hawaii for ten days … so it’s unlikely I’ll be posting much here, if at all, until the new year. However, my TV writing partner William Rabkin and my brother Tod Goldberg will be keeping the blog warm with their wit and wisdom.

Have a terrific holiday and a wonderful new year!

Another Scam that Preys on the Self-Published

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I’ve been getting this come-on in my emailbox for days now:

Why join BooksToFilm.com? Some of the best movies have been based on
books – Cold Mountain, The Godfather, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Evil, Prince of Tides, Forrest Gump, L.A. Confidential.
Your book could be next! Wouldn’t you like to have your book or screenplay made
into a movie? 

BookstoFilm.com publishes 2 catalogs per year which are
distributed to over 2500 film producers, directors, studios, and film agents
nationwide.  Get your full-page color ad in our catalog containing book
summary, book review, book photo, book ordering information, author bio, author
contact information, and representation information.

Email us today at
info@bookstofilm.com to get your listing in our Catalog.

It’s a fascinating bit of bullshit.  They list a bunch of books that have been turned into movies, the subtle implication being that this catalog had something to do with it.

It didn’t.

None of those books became movies because of this catalog. In fact, the folks at bookstofilm don’t list a single book that has sold to TV or film because of the catalog.

Gee, I wonder why…. could it be, because there aren’t any? Studio & Production Company execs find out about books the old-fashioned way…they read bestseller lists, they read reviews, they talk to agents, they read book industry trade publications, they attend the BEA, they talk to publishers, and they walk into bookstores.

If you visit the bookstofilm website, they make a big deal out of saying they are based in Wilmington, NC…

…fondly known as "Hollywood
East" and home of Screen Gems Studios. Screen Gems is the largest full service
motion picture facility in the United States east of California.  Wilmington has
been the heart of the North Carolina film industry for over two decades. A few
local projects have been Domestic Disturbance, Year of the Dragon, The
Hudsucker Proxy, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles, Billy Bathgate, Day of the Jackal, One Tree Hill, Matlock
and Dawson’s Creek .

They say that as if mere proximity to the Screen Gems soundstages, or just breathing that Wilmington air, gives them legitimacy and insider access to Hollywood.  They list no other qualifications or credits…what a shock.

Only a fool would read this material and think that they are paying for anything besides an ad in a piece of junkmail that’s going to end up in garbage cans throughout L.A…. assuming the catalog is actually sent out to anybody besides the suckers who take out ads.

Pity the poor, self-published author who falls for this transparent scam.

Rose at todays-woman.net reports that bookstofilm  is being run by John Weaver, the same guy behind WritersUniverse.net,  a program that purports to get "book store orders" from brick-and-mortar store for self-published authors (I talked about WritersUniverse.net here a few weeks ago).  Do you see a trend here? I bet it’s only a matter of weeks before Weaver launches a service to get self-published authors publicity in 100s of publications and thousand  of TV and Radio broadcasts.

Blog for Buzz?

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Author Dave Zeltserman has started a blog. Why?

Several reasons. One to be quite candid, to try to
create some buzz for my books. One of them has the potential of being
big. The editors looking at it now are calling it a high concept book.
A crime novel centering around outsourcing. Hasn’t been done before –
at least not that I know of. More about Outsourced in future posts.

When I started this blog, I certainly didn’t do it because I thought it would get me buzz…or more readers or viewers, though I certainly mention my books and TV shows a lot. Then again, writing books and TV shows is what I do, and is very much a part of who I am, so it would be hard for me to have a blog without talking about those things

So why did I start a blog? I did it because….hell, I don’t know. Probably for the same reasons I have a website with a discussion board and why, for many years, I ran a BBS for screenwriters from a computer in my garage.  I guess I like to yak and gossip and rant and pontificate about things that interest me. I like to publish. I like to broadcast.

It runs in my family, that’s for sure.

My Mom had a weekly newspaper column for years, wrote a non-fiction book, and has a blog now.

My brother Tod, an acclaimed literary novelist, has a weekly newspaper column and a website.

My  sisters Karen and Linda have individual websites, a shared website and a shared blog... and in November, their first book is coming out.

My father Alan was TV anchorman, my Uncle Burl was a DJ (and is now a bestselling author of true crime novels)…so the media is in our blood. And what is a blog, if not another form of print & broadcast media?

Do you think blogs actually create buzz for an author? Has it created buzz for me? Will it create buzz for Dave? Let me know.

More on Michael Gruber

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It’s common knowledge now that Michael Gruber has been ghosting Robert Tanenbaum’s legal thirllers… because Gruber is telling everybody about it. This week, Gruber is interviewed in Publisher’s Weekly, the industry trade magazine, and discussing his ghosting days in detail.

Gruber and Tanenbaum’s mothers are sisters and raised their sons in New York
together. Tanenbaum went on to become a successful trial lawyer, and when one of
his cases became nationally famous, the publishing house Franklin Watts (now a
division of Scholastic) asked him to write a novel about his legal adventures.Hook1
Knowing his cousin could write, Tanenbaum contacted Gruber. "He called me up,"
Gruber remembers, "and said, ‘I’ve written a hundred pages. Would you have a
look at it?’ " Gruber hesitates before explaining his reaction to Tanenbaum’s
hundred pages. "It was the kind of novel by somebody who doesn’t know anything
about writing novels," he says diplomatically. "So I called him, and I said,
‘This is unsalvageable. It’s not a novel, it has no characters, no plot,
nothing.’ He said, ‘What should I do?’ I said, ‘Look, for half the advance, I’ll
write your novel.’ On the basis of that we got another contract, for a lot more
money. And so I went into business."

In the acknowledgements of Tanenbaum’s bestselling "Butch Karp" novels, he always thanked Gruber, who ghosted over a dozen novels for his cousin.  The partnership began to fall apart when Gruber tired of sharing the cash and not the credit.

The cousins became "somewhat estranged" when Gruber said he wanted to have a
relationship with Tanenbaum’s publisher (previously, Gruber didn’t interact at
all with any editor or publisher). This didn’t go over well with Tanenbaum, and
when, thanks to Gruber’s pressuring, Tanenbaum revised his contract so that it
would have Gruber’s name in it, Gruber had to agree that he wouldn’t make any
claim for copyright, and tensions increased.

"It’s very sad," Gruber laments. "You can imagine, being a writer, you write
all these books, but you never experience the life of a writer." He lays out one
scenario: "You’re at a party, and you say, ‘I’m a writer.’ Someone says, ‘Oh,
have you been published?’ ‘Yeah, I have seven million books in print.’ ‘Really?
What’s your name?’ ‘Oh, I don’t publish under my own name.’ "

Resolved, published in 2003, was the last Tanenbaum book Gruber was
involved in (though Tanenbaum continues to publish books, the most recent of
which, Hoax, received mostly tepid reviews). Their relationship now?
Gruber answers, "Zero."

Gruber’s first novel under his own name was TROPIC OF NIGHT, a thriller that has sold 300,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. His new novel VALLEY OF BONES is getting a big push from his publisher (hence the profile in PW and full page ad) and a 100,000 copy first printing. Alerting the fans of Tanenbaum’s books that they were actually written by Gruber can’t hurt his sales, either. Although the publisher decided not to refer to Gruber’s relationship with Tanenbaum in any of their publicity material, that didn’t stop Gruber from making sure word got out.

Personally, I think Gruber should have kept his mouth shut. He made a deal with Tanenbaum to ghost his books and was paid handsomely for  it… to reveal the arrangement now seems malicious, self-serving, and unprofessional to me.  Everybody loses… Tanenbaum, his readers, and Gruber, who comes off as a jerk.

I wonder who is writing Tanenbaum’s books now…. heard any rumors?

English Teacher Castigated for Teaching Mystery Writing

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For the last five years, Rebecca Van Cuyk has taught a high school English course in Kaukauna Wisconsin called "History of the Mystery." Now’s she under fire in the local media for corrupting young minds… all because one parent has objected to the curriculum…a parent who believes the course will turn her child into a murderer.

In a letter to the Mystery Writers of America, Ms. Van Cuyk writes:

The class, and I personally, have been under attack (via letters to the editor, radio talk shows, and inaccurate news broadcasts) for approximately a month. Why? Because as a creative writing component of the course, the students were assigned to write their own murder mysteries. One parent objected and has since advertised to the media that I specifically assigned my students to "plot a murder." He has also suggested that "thoughts are the seeds of words and deeds" and the students, as a result, will be more likely to commit murders themselves. My life has been a living hell as a result

Here’s a sample of the grief she’s been getting from 105.7 WAPL radio:

We are proud to name as this week’s Rick and Len Weenie of the Week…. Kaukauna High School teacher Rebecca Van Cuyk who this week it was revealed that she assigned her English class to plan a murder as a writing project.

So,

For replacing reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic with means, motive and opportunity

For instructing kids to plan a homicide which is the worst instruction given to anyone since someone instructed Anna Nicole Smith to wash down a hand full of Secanol with quart of cheap tequila before the American Music Awards.

And,

For encouraging high school students to think about killing someone without realizing that the 5 hours they spend each week suffering through Algebra class is probably spent doing little else.

We are proud to name Kaukauna High School Teacher Rebecca Van Cuyk who assigned students the task of planning a murder as this week’s Rick and Len….. WEENIE OF THE WEEK!!!!

The person they should be ridiculing is the parent who objects to the course but, sadly, that isn’t the case.

Ms. Van Cuyk, in her letter to the MWA, is asking mystery writers for their support in her battle to keep her course from being axed over this ridiculous controversy.

The one parent who has a problem with the assignment (even though his daughter was offered an alternative assignment) is pursuing his agenda of having the Murder Mystery writing component ELIMINATED entirely from our curriculum. He will be presenting his "case" to our Curriculum and Instruction Committee and then the school board. This is where I would like to ask for your help.

As mystery writers, surely you understand that writing a mystery in which
a murder takes place will not make you a murderer. (If it did, I guess you would all be in prison as opposed to free citizens who belong to this organization.)

This seems to have become an issue of "morality," as if by writing about murder, the author is somehow glorifying or condoning the act, or again, be tempted to "try it" himself. I am concerned that the school board will agree to eliminate the assignment based on this erroneous "morality argument."

I am writing to ask if any of you, several of you, or even all of you, would consider writing a letter to our Curriculum and Instruction Committee and school board, addressing any of the following:

1. The "morality" issue
2. The fallacy that writing a murder mystery will create a murderer
3. The literary merit of constructing a well-thought out mystery
4. The skills that can be strengthened by writing a mystery
5. The purpose behind writing a mystery and/or the end result of the
mystery story (to restore order, see good triumph over evil, etc.)
6. Anything you see as relating to the importance/relevance of this
assignment, in specific

It has been suggested by our administrators that we change the assignment
to just be "any kind of mystery." (e.g. the kids can write about surprise birthday parties or searching for the holy grail) While I know that mysteries can effectively be written about anything if the author is skilled enough, that is not the point.

We study mystery authors all semester who write, specifically, about the solving of murders: Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, as well as several other lesser known authors. When the murder mystery assignment was created, its goal in part was to "test" the kids on what they had learned about the construction of a murder mystery, in specific.

As one of the teachers of this course, I do not see a benefit in changing the language in our curriculum to assign the students "any kind of mystery." (Please note: as an educator, I do not force students to do things with which they have personal issues. We have always offered an alternate assignment on a case-by-case basis and will continue to do so.)  The big deal here is that ONE parent wants to force us to change our curriculum. One parent, of the over 500 students who have taken this course in the last five years.

If you are inclined to help us retain the integrity (and EXISTENCE) of the murder mystery writing assignment, and willing to write a letter on behalf of the course and the assignment itself, I would appreciate it if you would address it to:

Kaukauna School District
Curriculum and Instruction Committee
112 Main Ave
Kaukauna, WI 54130

And/or:

Kaukauna School District
School Board
112 Main Ave
Kaukauna, WI 54130

Thank you in advance for any help you would be willing to offer. If you have questions, or merely wish to contact me, please feel free to do so at: vancuykr@kaukauna.k12.wi.us.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Van Cuyk
English Department
Kaukauna High School

If you are as outraged as I am, I hope you will consider writing a letter in support of this teacher and her program.

TV Cannibalization — it’s a Series!

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I didn’t realize it before, but thanks to Bob Sassone, I’ve discovered that these TV cannibalizations (see previous post) aren’t just specials anymore, they’re a franchise, which is Industry-speak for a series.

Yahoo reports that NBC is mounting a TV movie about the making of MORK AND MINDY, which is "extending its successful "Behind the Camera" movie franchise."

"The movie is a celebration of a great sitcom and the comic genius of Robin Williams," said executive producer Matt Dorff. "It also explores the downside of the show’s overnight success when the network takes a hit show and tries to fix it."

But that’s not all. The movie stars little-known Canadian actor Chris Diamantopoulos as Robin Williams, and Dorff believes this could lead to much bigger things…

"We believe that — like ‘Mork & Mindy’ was for Williams — this is going be his springboard to TV stardom."

Hell, if that happens, this could be the start of a whole new franchise. In five or ten years, we could see movies about the making of movies about the making the TV shows. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

If I were Matt Dorff, I’d take lots of notes during the shooting…

TV Discovers New Way to Cannibalize Itself

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Nowadays it isnt enough to resurrect old TV shows for revivals (new movies continuing the stories of the characters from the show), reunion specials (actors reminiscing over clips from the old show) and feature film remakes (like STARSKY AND HUTCH, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, etc.). Clever network executives have figured out a new way to exploit old hits… 

Now they are making TV movies about the making of  old TV shows.

There have been TV movies about the making of  BATMAN,  THE BRADY BUNCH,  CHARLIE’S ANGELS,  THREE’S COMPANY and now ABC is about to air DYNASTY: BEHIND-THE-SCENES OF A GUILTY PLEASURE. 

The movies-about-TV shows try to make the routine  power plays, artistic differences, and personality clashes play out like high drama (or low comedy, depending on your POV)  instead of what it really is — insanely stupid squabbling over nothing. What’s even more amazing is that people actually tune in to watch the stuff.

If this swill keeps scoring in the ratings, can TV movies about the making of MASH, ALL IN THE FAMILY, STAR TREK, and KNIGHTRIDER be far behind?

To me,  movies about the production of classic TV shows is a new low point for television, though not quite as offensive and jaw-droppingly low brow as reality shows like  TEMPTATION ISLAND, WIFE SWAP, FEAR FACTOR, and EXTREME MAKE-OVER.   But I suppose the  television industry’s endless fascination with itself shouldn’t be a surprise…  Showtime just announced it was making a movie out of  the battle between Michael Eisner and Mike Ovitz at Disney.